The world’s second-richest man has said he has sold his private jet so “no one can see where I go” after being tracked by climate activists on Twitter.
Bernard Arnault, the boss of luxury goods company LVMH – known for Moet, Louis Vuitton and Hennessy – has a net worth of $152bn (£134bn), according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, surpassing Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Accounts such as @i_fly_Bernard and @laviondebernard had sprung up on Twitter to track the private jet of Mr Arnault and other billionaires to reveal the amount of pollution they cause.
“Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it,” the 73-year-old French business magnate told France’s Radio Classique.
“The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes.”
His son, Antoine Arnault, 45, said in the same interview that other people knowing where the company jet is could give away key information to competitors.
“It’s not very good that our competitors can know where we are at any moment,” he said.
“That can give ideas, it can also give leads, clues.”
Bernard Arnault is not the only public figure to have his carbon footprint scrutinised on social media.
A teenager set up a Twitter account last year to track Elon Musk‘s private jet.
The SpaceX and Tesla chief described the tracker, which uses publicly available air-traffic information, as a potential threat to his safety – and offered the youngster $5k to shut down the @ElonJet account which was rejected.
Earlier this year the University of Florida student asked Mr Musk for $50k, which the entrepreneur and world’s richest man, declined.
